Environmental Engineering and Management Journal September 2016, Vol.15, No. 9, 2019-2027 http://omicron.ch.tuiasi.ro/EEMJ/
“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, Romania
PRODUCT ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT IN THE OLIVE OIL
SECTOR: STATE OF THE ART
Carlo Russo
1, Giulio Mario Cappelletti
1, Giuseppe Martino Nicoletti
1, George
Michalopoulos
2, Claudio Pattara
3, Juan Antonio Polo Palomino
4, Hanna L. Tuomisto
51Department of Economics, University of Foggia, Italy 2RodaxAgro Ltd, Kottou 48, Metamorphosis, Attikis, Athens, Greece 3Department of Economics, University “G. d’Annunzio”, Pescara, Italy
4CO2 Consulting, Córdoba, Spain
5European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environmental and Sustainability
Abstract
As a part of the development of the Environmental Footprint (EF) guidelines, in June 2014 the European Commission started 11 pilot projects for the development of Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCRs) for food, feed and beverage products. The PEFCRs are developed by technical secretariats involving various stakeholders from industries, academia, governments, trade unions and non-governmental organisations. This paper presents the state of the art of developing the PEFCR for the olive oil sector. The functional unit is defined as a litre of packed olive oil and the system boundaries cover the whole supply chain from cradle-to-grave. A screening study that estimated the EF of the average olive oil consumed in the European markets showed that olive production phase had the highest contribution to most environmental impact categories. The results of the screening study provide a benchmark that will be further adjusted after the current draft PEFCR will be tested in case studies for real products.
Key words: environmental impacts, life cycle assessment, olive oil, product environmental footprint Received: January, 2016; Revised final: September, 2016; Accepted: September, 2016
Author to whom all correspondence should be addressed: e-mail: carlo.russo@unifg.it; Phone: +39 0881 781732
1. Introduction
1.1. Environmental Footprint
In the context of the Communication “Building the Single Market for Green Products” (COM 196, 2013), the European Commission (EC) recommends a method to measure the environmental performance of products, named the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) (EC, 2013 a, b). The PEF is a multi-criteria measure of the environmental performance of goods and services from a life cycle perspective. PEF studies are produced for the overarching purpose of seeking to reduce the environmental impacts associated with goods and services, taking into account supply chain activities
(from extraction of raw materials, through production and use, to final waste management). As the “Guidelines for the implementation of the PEF (EC, 2016) are overall guidelines that have to be applicable to all products, PEFCRs aim to define specific aspects for calculating and reporting life cycle environmental impacts of products in a harmonised way. For these reasons, 25 PEF pilot projects started in 2014 by involving various stakeholders for the development of PEFCRs in a process that includes public consultations, reviews and approvals by the Environmental Footprint pilot Steering Committee that includes representatives from each pilot, European Union (EU) Member States and NGOs. In June 2014, 11 pilots for the sectors food, feed and beverage started (Benini et al.,
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Russo et al./Environmental Engineering and Management Journal 15 (2016), 9, 2019-2027 2014). They include beer, coffee, dairy, feed, pet
food, seafood, meat, pasta, packed water, olive oil and wine.
1.2. EF Olive oil pilot project
The Technical Secretariat (TS) of the olive oil pilot, consisting or representatives from industry, academia, governments and NGOs, is responsible for the design and drafting of the PEFCR. The first task of the TS was to define the scope of the PEFCR and the representative product that describes the average product consumed in the European markets. A public consultation for the scope and representative product of olive oil was organised in October-November 2014, and the SC approved the documents in February 2015.
The second phase involved carrying out a screening study in order to identify the most contributing life cycle stages, processes, environmental impact categories and elementary flows of the representative product defined in the scope document. The screening report was submitted to the reviewers appointed by the EC, and after the revising phase, it was approved in November 2015.
The results of the full screening study were used as a basis for the draft PEFCR for olive oil, which went through a public stakeholder consultation in November-December 2015, and was approved by the EF SC in January 2016. Successively, the draft PEFCR are in testing in supporting studies, which are
applying the PEFCR for real products. During the supporting studies, various ways of communicating the environmental footprint results to consumers and businesses will be tested, including a SME tool based on ICT (application on smartphone). The PEFCR will be revised based on the lessons learned from the supporting studies, after which the stakeholders have another opportunity to provide comments on the PEFCR. Before final approval of the PEFCR by the EF SC, the PEFCR will be reviewed by external reviewers. The final PEFCRs are scheduled to be released by beginning of 2017.
In this paper, we present an overview of the methods and results of the screening study that modeled the impact of an average olive oil consumed in the European markets. In particular, the paper aims to describe the methodological issues behind the definition of the life cycle assessment of a ‘virtual olive oil’ (representative product) defined as average of European data for each phase. More detailed description of the screening study is available in the technical report of Tuomisto et al. (2015) study.
2. Methods
2.1. Scope and representative product
The functional unit was set as a liter of packed olive oil used by consumers as salad dressing and for cooking. The system boundaries were defined from cradle to grave as shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. System boundaries
Fig. 2. Olive oil world production (1,000 tonnes). Source: International Olive Oil Council (IOOC)
Fig. 3. Olive oil world imports. Source: IOOC (2012)
Fig. 4. Olive oil imports and exports in EU (1,000 tonnes). Source: IOOC (2016) The representative product was defined as a
virtual product describing the average olive oil in the European markets (IOOC, 2012). As approximately 75% of all olive oil is produced in Europe, and as Spain, Italy and Greece account for over 90% of the European production (Fig. 2), the representative product was modelled based on data from Spain, Italy and Greece. According to the aims of the PEF Pilot, export and import flows were excluded from
the study. However, Fig. 3 shows that import flows towards the European countries are not so relevant, while, Fig. 4 shows that Italy and Spain are the main exporting countries (D’Annibale et al., 2014; IOOC, 2016).
As shown in the flow chart in Fig. 1, efforts were done to calculate average data for the European context by describing a system with a great degree of complexity and high spatial heterogeneity due to the
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Russo et al./Environmental Engineering and Management Journal 15 (2016), 9, 2019-2027 contribution of many factors both exogenous and
endogenous to LCA methodology.
The representative product (virtual product) was assumed to be consisting of the following olive oil types classified on the base of European legislation (EC, 2013a):
• virgin olive oil (including extra virgin and virgin olive oils);
• refined olive oil;
• refined pomace oil.
Fig. 5 shows the contribution of different olive oil types to the representative product calculated as a sum the contribution of the three main European producer countries: Spain, Italy and Greece.
Fig. 5. Percentage of different olive oil type defined as
representative product
As for the allocation procedure, it was based on economic allocation calculated by multiplying the mass of each fraction per its market value. Table 1 shows the three allocation factors referred to the production of extra virgin, virgin and lampante olive oil (first allocation), the production of pomace olive oil (second allocation) and the production of refined olive oil (third allocation).
2.2. Data sources and LCA modelling
GaBi software and Ecoinvent dataset (Frischknecht et al., 2007; IKP and PE, 2002; Weidema et al., 2013) were used for the life cycle
assessment modelling. As for the geographical context, Italian data for the screening study was mainly taken from past olive oil LCA studies (Cappelletti et al., 2014; De Luca et al., 2015; Proietti et al., 2014; Rinaldi et al., 2014; Salomone et al., 2010; Salomone et al., 2015; Tsarouhas et al., 2015) and Environmental Product Declarations (Apolio, 2012; Assoproli, 2012; De Cecco, 2012; Monini, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2012d), and some data were collected directly from the industry. As far as Greece, data from the LIFE+ project OLIVE CLIMA (LIFE project OLIVE CLIMA, 2013) and a LIFE Project SAGE10 (LIFE project SAGE10, 2011) were used.
Spanish system is based on the average data from representative Andalusian farms. This choice is due to the relevance that this region has on the Spanish olives production (EC, 2012).
The life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out according to the ISO 14040 and 14044 standards (ISO 14040, 2006; ISO 14044, 2006), the guidance provided by JRC-IES (2010), the PEF guide (EC, 2013b) and specific guidance provided for the pilot projects (EC, 2016). The EF impact categories and assessment methods were those presented in the PEF guide (Table 2).
2.2.1. Field stage
According to the Eurostat data referred to the years 2010-2012 for Greece and Spain and to the years 2010-2011 for Italy, the olive production was modelled by considering the following average yield in kg per hectare: Spain 2,436; Italy 2,720; Greece 2,157 (Eurostat, 2014).
As concerning the biogenic carbon sequestrated by the olive fruits, an average value of 0.25 kg of carbon per kg of olives was assumed (Nardino et al., 2013), despite, the CO2 sequestrated
is released in the atmosphere in the other phases of the life cycle. The impacts related to land use change were not included in the base model, due to the fact that olive groves in Europe have been established more than 20 years ago.
Table 1. Allocation factors
Mass Unit value Allocation factor
% Euro/kg %
First allocation after pressing olive fruit
Extra virgin olive oil 9.14 1.88 46.14 Virgin olive oil 6.5 1.73 30.34 Lampante olive oil 4.67 1.61 20.26 Olive pits 9.3 0.07 0.95 Wet pomace (70% moisture) 70.4 0.01 2.32
Total 100 100
Second allocation (content of wet pomace)
Crude pomace 91.6 0.79 100 Dry pomace 8.4 0 0
Total 100 100
Third allocation (crude pomace)
Refined pomace olive oil 2.8 1.11 86.92 Dry pomace 26 0.01 9.47
Olive pit 1.8 0.07 3.61 Waste water 69.4 0 0
Total 100 100
Table 2. Impact categories
Impact Category Unit
Climate change midpoint, excl biogenic carbon (v1.06) kg CO2-eq
Climate change midpoint, incl biogenic carbon (v1.06) kg CO2-eq
PEF-IPCC global warming (biogenic) kg CO2-eq
Ozone depletion, WMO model, ReCiPe kg CFC-11-eq
Human toxicity cancer effects, USEtox (without long-term) CTUh
Human toxicity non-canc. effects, USEtox (without long-term) CTUh
Acidification, accumulated exceedance Mole of H+-eq
Particulate matter/Respiratory inorganics, RiskPoll kg PM2.5-eq
Ecotoxicity for aquatic fresh water, USEtox (without long-term) CTUe Ionising radiation, human health effect model, ReCiPe (corrected) kg 235U-eq
Photochemical ozone formation, LOTOS-EUROS model, ReCiPe kg NMVOC Terrestrial eutrophication, accumulated exceedance Mole of N-eq Freshwater eutrophication, EUTREND model, ReCiPe (without long-term) kg P-eq Marine eutrophication, EUTREND model, ReCiPe kg N-eq Land use, Soil Organic Matter (SOM, Ecoinvent & Hemeroby - EMS-19May2015) kg C deficit-eq Resource depletion water, midpoint, Swiss Ecoscarcity (v1.06 - EMS- 19May2015) m³-eq. Resource depletion, mineral, fossils and renewables, midpoint (v1.06) kg Sb-eq
Source: European Commission (2016)
As for the agricultural practices, it is worth nothing that the representative product referred to average data about farming systems adopted in the three main producer countries (Spain, Italy and Greece). Large differences can be observed in the olive orchard management for each country, due to many factors such as agricultural systems (traditional, intensive, super-intensive, organic, conventional), farming techniques (ratio of irrigated/rain-fed olive groves, soil cultivation, fertilisers and pesticides use) and genetic resources (cultivars). As above specified, efforts was simply describing a complex system with a great degree of variability.
The following agricultural practices were considered for olive production: harvesting, irrigation, use of plant protection products and herbicides, soil management, pruning and fertilising. The harvesting process was modeled by considering the principal techniques of harvesting adopted in the main producer countries. As for Italy, the Ecoinvent processes of using fertilising broadcaster was adopted in order to calculate the diesel consumption and the emissions of the use of air compressor activated by the tractor gimbal. For Spain and Greece, the two stroke engine vibrator was considered, so the emissions of the combustion of two stroke blend petrol were modeled by applying a correction factor to the emissions referred to a process of use of a car petrol (Aminu, 2006; EPA, 2009).
As for the irrigation process, mean electricity consumption was calculated per m3 of water used for
irrigation, and also the plastic material of drip irrigation system was investigated. The scenario includes an electric pump that withdraws ground water from a well to the irrigation system (localized drip-irrigation system that adopts drip-sprinklers of polyethylene). The ground water flows were regionalized according to the different countries. The pesticides dispersion in air, soil and water was
calculated according to the Mackay’s fugacity model (Mackay, 1991).
The practices of soil management were modelled according to the Ecoinvent dataset. The pruning operation were modeled considering the use of chainsaw, so the same assumption of the two-stroke engine emissions done in the harvesting phase were considered. In this case, the lube oil consumption was relatively high.
The fertilization phase was modeled by considering the N-P-K content required per hectare, so a generic N, P and K fertilizer was taken into account. The nitrogen losses were estimated by using the Bentrup’s model (Brentrup et al., 2000). The NOx
and phosphorous emissions were calculated according to the Ecoinvent report no.15 on Agricultural production systems (Nemecek and Kägi, 2007).
2.2.2. Processing stage
As concerning the industrial phase of extra virgin, virgin and lampante olive oil production, the main technologies adopted in the three main producer countries Spain, Italy and Greece were considered (75% three phases and 25% two phase systems). According to the Reg. CEE 1513/2001 and International Olive Oil Council standard (IOOC/T.15/NC No 3), the process for obtaining theese three categories of olive oil is the same, and differences are only due to chemical-physical and organoleptics characteristics (e.g free acidity, expressed as oleic acid). Indeed, extra virgin and virgin olive oils are used for human consumption, while lampante is intended for further refining process or for technical use.
As concerning the the pomace olive oil (oil obtained from the residues of olive oil extraction composed of husk, pit fragments and pulp of the olives after olive oil extraction process), the extraction process was modeled by considering an average process of chemical extraction by using
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Russo et al./Environmental Engineering and Management Journal 15 (2016), 9, 2019-2027 hexane as solvent. Exhausted pomace was assumed
to be used as fuel to dry the virgin pomace before the pomace olive oil extraction and produce steam able to recover the hexane. The refining process was modeled by considering a physical refining.
2.2.3. Packaging
The packaging for the virtual olive oil (representative product) was constructed from the average European mix of three types of packaging: 60% glass, 20% polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and 20% metal cans (composed by aluminum, tin and steel).
2.2.4. Transportation
As concerning transports, average transportation distances were assumed according to data collected for each phase of the life cycle. Due to the fact that imports and exports flows were excluded, transports referred to olives and olive oil production phases. As for distribution of the packed product to the consumer, both sea and road transportation were assumed.
2.2.5. Use phase
Due to lack of official data, the assumptions of the use phase consider 55% salad dressing, 7% deep-frying and 38% cooking. As concerning the deep-frying, an average industrial process with the use of an electric fryer was modelled according to literature (Wu et al., 2010). The cooking phase was modelled by considering a natural gas powered stove, a temperature around 150°C and a time of cooking of 600 seconds. The emissions of natural gas burning were modelled according to the Ecoinvent dataset. 2.2.6.End of Life
The waste oil was assumed to be disposed of only in the case of deep-frying, as it was assumed that all olive oil used as salad dressing or for cooking is consumed by human. Due to the long self-life of
olive oil, it was assumed that disposal of unused olive oil is negligible. Regarding the End of Life (EoL) of the packaging materials, the default formula provided in the PEF guide was used.
As for the EoL of the waste oil after deep frying the biogenic CO2 emission was also taken into
account in the process of energy recovery, while a biogenic methane emission was included if the waste oil was considered disposed in landfill. All information regarding background and activity data of the inventory considered in the study are available in the in the technical report by Tuomisto et al. (2015).
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Life Cycle Impact Assessment
The results of the LCA indicated in the screening report and referred to the virtual product show that the olive production has the highest contribution to most impact categories, except for human toxicity (cancer effects), which is dominated by packaging (Fig. 6).
The major impacts of the phase of olives cultivation is principally due to the production and use of fertilisers and plant protection products. Soil management, pruning and harvesting practices have a relative high contribution in Particulate Matter/Respiratory inorganics and photochemical ozone formation impact categories. Irrigation dominates the total freshwater consumption –impact category. The negative biogenic carbon removal during olive production stage includes the carbon that is removed by harvesting the olive fruit. This carbon is released back to the atmosphere during consumption of olive oil and end of life management.
However, according to the End of Life formula the biotic global warming potential is slightly positive due to biogenic methane emissions from the end of life stage.
Fig. 6. Contribution of different life cycle stages on the total impact
As concerning the different olive oil extraction steps, pomace olive oil extraction has the highest contribution to most impact categories. Electricity use is the most contributing processes for most impact categories. At the same way, electricity production mainly affects the virgin olive oil extraction phase, despite some credits are derived from using disposed leaves as fuel for energy generation. Electricity use has also a high contribution to the impacts of the refining process. However, upstream impacts from chemical production (including phosphoric acid, sodium hydroxide and activated bentonite) and steam production have also relative high contribution.
In the packaging phase, glass bottle production is the most contributing process. The impact of distribution of the final product from the olive oil mill to the consumer is mainly dominated by lorry transportation. The end of life impacts is mainly negative due to the credit from energy generation from waste or recycling. The biogenic carbon emissions from waste olive oil management are mainly due to release of biogenic carbon that is absorbed from the atmosphere by the olive fruit. 3.2. Open issues and benchmark
A significant must be devoted to the methodological issues in order to standardize the datasets quality, the procedures and the calculations of the environmental impacts through LCA. PEFCR for the Olive Oil PEF Pilot are close to be finalized, with the contribution of major market players. It is also true that the future of PEF for olive oil sector will depend on the assurance that it will provide to all the stakeholders that any comparisons to be made will be unequivocally fair, equally for large players and for SMEs, large countries and less developed areas.
The difference between large companies and SMEs is the availability of resources for the development of their own PEF. Considering that data collection is the most costly phase of an LCA and that overcoming data confidentiality is a challenge for the transparency required for product comparisons, it is obvious that the trueness of the activity data is maybe the most sensitive issue for PEF. In other terms, PEF usefulness is proportional to the quality, completeness and credibility of the data it relies on. If this is achieved, PEF can become the vehicle for designing olive oil chain on a new basis, just because it is offered for comparisons on how it is performing, based on quantified information. Apart from price per product unit and income per year, it is the first time a quantity can be the base for evaluation of efficiency of the sector in economic and environmental terms, offering opportunities for side objectives that can be pursued by one or more of the partners.
For these reasons the definition of benchmark is a key issues of the pilot. Due to many uncertainties
and data gaps of the virtual product identified in the screening report, the benchmark will be revised after supporting studies. In particular the environmental performances of the worst and best case will be defined and the environmental performance classes will be determined between this range. Three benchmarks will be created for the three olive oil categories marketed for human consumption (virgin olive oil, olive oil and pomace olive oil). Furthermore, the current draft PEFCR will be revised and default datasets will be provided by distinguising different types of olive grove management systems, industrial processes and type of packaging.
4. Conclusions
LCA and environmental performance of products enters a new daring era with PEF. Daring, just because the concept of product comparison and comparative assertions is introduced, creating a strong drive for producers of final products, expandable to intermediate ones, even on raw materials etc, as long as PEFCRs will be made available.
The screening study of the average olive oil consumed in the European markets provide an initial benchmark for the PEFCR development, despite many uncertainties and data gaps. PEFCR will be tested on real products in the supporting studies, in order to determine environmental performance classes. Furthermore, the current draft PEFCR will be revised and default datasets will be provided.
Despite the efforts of the members of the Technical Secretariat many issues remain opened and the future challenge must be addressed to reduce uncertainity and harmonize the data collection procedures for LCA, especially for the use of inputs. For these reasons the olive oil pilot’s TS is attempting to provide specific default datasets able to represent the huge variability of the systems that characterize the olive oil sector in Europe, especially for the complexity of the field stage (mainly due to the different agricultural systems, farming techniques, and genetic resources) and the accounting of the net carbon sequestration by soils of olive plantations.
Acknowledgements
The study was carried out according to the involvement of the authors in the Olive Oil PEF pilot. All information could be find at the following link:
https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/wikis/display/EUENVFP /PEFCR+Pilot%3A+Olive+oil
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